Ask PokerTableRatings.com Your Questions

Hi CardsChat members!

Lots of CardsChat members already use PTR to give them an edge against their opponents, but there's some of you out there who have never heard of us. If you haven't already used PTR, check it out now! You get 10 free searches per day for just registering.

You can also upgrade to PTR Premium. PTR Premium helps you find the fish, avoid the sharks and get detailed stats on all their opponents. You can learn more about PTR Premium here.

What all our customers have in common is the desire to improve their game. And that's what PTR (and this forum) is all about - we want to help you become a better poker player.

Ask a question or post a suggestion now!

Why do you sell hands for poker sites that explicitely prohibit using any hand histories that are not collected from your own play?

Getting straight to the tough questions I see

The simple truth is that we sell hand histories because we're a for-profit business.

But, we can sleep easy at night knowing that we're leveling the playing field. Instead of massive databases being available to only some players, we make easy for anyone to get information on their opponents. Large databases of observed hands have been around for quite some time. Until PokerTableRatings.com came around, these databases were mostly controlled by individual players or small groups of players. These players had a big advantage against the competition.

Also, without trying to get into a huge legal debate, we feel that hand histories and player stats are in the public domain. In the 2005 case of Major League Baseball Players Association vs. CDM, U.S. District Court Judge Mary Ann Medler ruled that "fantasy baseball leagues are allowed to use player names and statistics without licensing agreements because they are not the intellectual property of Major League Baseball."

I used to use PTR a lot, and found it extremely useful. However, since the new "credits" system I've found myself using it less and less. W

Why the 10 a day limitation? I can understand paying for all the extra stuff, but when I'm already being shown adverts while searching I'm not willing to pay as well.

I'm glad to hear you're a fan of PTR!

The good news is that PTR Premium members are not shown any ads.

Before we launched PTR Premium, we carefully analyzed how many searches users did per day. We put them into several buckets: casual users, serious users and hardcore users.

Casual users do less than 10 searches a day (mostly to rail poker celebrities and see how their friends are doing). We wanted PTR to remain free for casual users.

Serious users do an average of 30-35 searches per day. We're providing them a ton of value by helping improve their game so most of them were willing to invest $19.99/month for PTR Premium Silver or Pay-As-You-Go.

Hardcore users do over 35+ searches a day and can buy the Gold plan. They're using PTR like crazy to analyze their play, research their opponents and review hand histories. The value we provide these players is immense!

How about a PTR opt out like so many tourney tracking sites do?

We get asked that question quite a bit!

There are 2 main reasons why we don't allow opt-outs:

1. We want to create the best possible product for online poker players. Making information unavailable for some players makes PTR less valuable to our customers.
2. Imagine we allowed opt-outs. Almost all the sharks would opt-out: there's no sense giving their opponents extra info right? The only people that wouldn't opt-out are the fish. It would be a really un-level playing field...

Aren't PS HH's the intellectual property of PS and the individual player?

That's a good question and there's no 100% clear-cut answer.

There are valid arguments that HH's are the intellectual property of PS and the player.

There are also valid legal arguments that HH's are in the public domain and no one has intellectual property rights on them.

And those arguments are.....??????

They are in the public domain only because sites similar to yours data mine the site. Which to me is no different than hacking.

I'm not a lawyer, but one of the most compelling arguments for me is that the results of a poker hand are a statement of fact. Facts are not copywritable and are automatically in the public domain.

- Michael

Anyone can sit there and watch the hands and write down what happens...

No one can sit there and watch EVERY hand and write down what happens though.

I can

You can sit down and watch ANY hand though, volume may be limited but access is not restricted.

I just did a PTR on myself. As a tourney guy, PTR does not have enough on me to be significant in any way shape or form.

I have played a gazillion hands that are not showing up. Mostly RUSH ring games, which I think can not be recorded by anyone but the participants. Am I correct?

Also, I am of the mind that all recorded poker hands are fact, and not imaginary fabrications which would be covered by intellectual property rights and have no problem with publication.

Yes, this is correct.

do you ban people from your site if they use your info to berate and embarass other players?

I guess it's only good for cash tables not tournies....I'm pretty sure I've played more than 1366 hands in one year - April 09 to April 10 - I play that many hands on a bad weekend.....lol

Yes, only cash

Hi pfb8888,

We can't tell if a player uses PTR info to insult another player on PokerStars, Full Tilt, etc.

However, there have been cases where we received a complaint about an excessively rude comment on a player's wall on PokerTableRatings.com and we took it down.

- Michael

Could you make an analysis of who wins and who loses from FTP's move from dealt rake to weighted contributed rake?

Do you think what you do is ethical?

Hi dj11,

PokerTableRatings.com does not currently track Rush games. However, we do track around 95% of cash game hands on all the major poker rooms.

- Michael

Yes, we think what we are doing is ethical.

- Michael

Except you missed about 150 hands of mine at $5/$10 NLHU when I was with AcidGrinder. I watched the replay, the pots over $150 I won don't show, but then I go from having $1k (100bb) to $2,530 in the replayer but you don't have the hands where I took money off of him. It only recorded ~88 hands from this 250+ Hand Session

Hi, I'm sure the answer is somewhere, but can you tell us how PTR collects all these HHs from all these sites? For instance, I am limited to observing only 10 hands at Stars with PT3... how can PTR collect all these histories, and why can't I?

They break the ToS and you don't.

Can we be more specific?... how can they collect results from all those tables, i.e. are they using a table tracking system that Stars can't detect? What might that be?

Do they open up 60 tables at Stars and Tilt for example and just sit back all day? Plus track other sites? Must be some robust software...

EDIT: Make that 600+ tables at all limits.

Maybe the PTR guy will tell us how it's done

-you need to play slower , especially hu , so ptr can track every hand...lol

Actually isnt the 95% hands tracked number high?

AND if your database is incomplete your basically charging people to look at info thats not correct.

I know first hand. I stopped looking at that BS a few months ago when I realized how many hands you actually miss. Not hands, ENTIRE sessions.


And then, had the nerve to ask me to send you my HH. I ask, why? are you going to update my page? ptr:no.

We have tons of amazing hardware and some extremely talented programmers.

- Michael

Do you think that having comprehensive and organized HH on every player at the table displayed in a HUD is inevitably going to become the de facto standard for online poker?

Do you think that the poker sites will eventually give in and start offering this feature themselves?

Zero Now. Did we scare off the PTR guys?